“Room Service” is an accommodation to guests of hotels and similar institutions whereby guests of the hotel may order food, beverages and other items from a food service facility maintained by the hotel for consumption in the guest's room. Typically, a guest selects items from a printed menu placed in the room, calls a telephone number and places an order for the selected items. The order is transmitted to food service personnel who then prepare the order. After the order has been prepared, the food service personnel notify members of the hotel staff that deliver the order to the guest's room.
Many hotel guests would rather stay in their rooms and work or engage in other activities rather than spending their time in a hotel restaurant or finding another dining establishment at another location. Consequently, a large number of hotel guests consider prompt and efficient room service to be an important amenity. Thus, it not surprising that failure to provide room service that meets guest expectations is a major cause of guest complaints for hotels and similar institutions.
However, the current methods for providing room service tend to be inefficient for a number of reasons. Telephone orders may be misinterpreted and the wrong items provided. Language barriers may result in orders being misunderstood or misinterpreted. If the hotel staff responsible for taking a guest's order is busy with another task, the guest may be put on hold until the staff member is available to take the guest's order. Further, since the orders are placed verbally, there is no clear audit trail to determine what a guest actually ordered. Thus, there exists a need for a system and method which provides prompt, efficient room service with minimized errors and which provides a means of recording guest orders with certainty.